What is grounding? Why is it important? How do I get started?

We've got the answers!

 

Key concepts:

• Grounding is the practice of electrically connecting yourself to the earth.
• Human bodies operate on electricity.
• The earth conducts and holds electricity.
  • In the last ~100 years, plastics, rubber, wood, and other materials in almost every environment broke the natural connection to the earth. 
• Humans today accumulate excess electrical charge through 2 primary sources:
  
  • Internal - natural bodily operations 
  • External - unnatural conducted and induced current from noisy devices (power delivery, radio, Wi-Fi, etc.)
• Without a connection to the earth, the body is unbalanced.
• Grounding restores that connection!

BUT WAIT

• Grounding indoors via power outlets or a dedicated rod, allows ALL sources of electrical current to flow through you to the ground.
  • You are unintentionally exposing yourself to unwanted frequencies, polluting your ground connection.
  • The human body behaves like an antenna.   
• Solution: Filter the Ground! 
  
  • Block unnatural current (power delivery, radio, Wi-Fi, etc.)
  • Allow natural current (DC + Natural low frequency signals)
• Result:
  • Body allowed to connect and regulate with the earth.
  • Unnatural effects neutralized!

What is grounding?

Grounding refers to the practice of electrically connecting yourself to the earth. Directly touching the earth is the most effective and complete grounding method, but unfortunately, we can't be outside 24/7. Conductors, often wires, are used to bring that connection indoors and into environments where we spend most of our time.

A grounding end point is what you use to connect yourself. One convenient way is through grounding mats (which we have available on our site) and in other forms such as; sheets, pillow cases, arm bands, and more.

The simplest grounding method to understand is also the most inconvenient - directly running a wire into the dirt. This most commonly looks like a copper rod with a wire attached that runs to your grounding end point.

The easiest and most popular grounding method is through your existing wiring - the U.S. outlet! The third prong on modern home wiring is specifically for ground and goes back to a whole house grounding rod. This preexisting infrastructure is important for devices and electrical safety, with the Ground Fault Interrupt Circuit (GFCI) standard. This most commonly looks like the end point connected to the outlet, where the existing wiring and ground rod takes the rest.

But why even connect to the earth?

The human body is full of cells all of which operate with electricity! You, right now reading this, are seeing and feeling the result of electrical signals being sent throughout your brain and nervous system.

Earth serves as a large electrical sink. It acts as a bottom reference for all systems and distributes electrical current. Think of the large lighting strikes which pass current up into the atmosphere - the natural act of balancing the earth's electrical charge. Up until the last 100 years or so, humans were constantly grounded (electrically connected) to the earth.

We do not know exactly what role the earth serves, but it is apparent that the human body operates best when working in sync with the earth.

Unfortunately, we have become disconnected to the earth. Almost every environment the modern person spends the majority of their time in is insulated from the earth. Plastics, rubber, wood, and all of their byproducts made from that do not allow electrical current to flow through them. Even when outside, shoes and socks still are a barrier to connecting with the earth.

Additionally, we have surrounded ourselves with obscene amounts of man-made electrical fields in the form of power distribution (think home power lines), radio communications (think AM/FM radio, Wi-Fi, Cellular signals, etc.), and other polluted frequencies from every device around us.

Whenever electrical current flows through any conductor (such as a wire), a magnetic field is produced around the conductor. In most devices, the fields are short and weak, with no impact to the device's operation. When the current is varied, the field will vary, which creates a chain of magnetic and electric fields that is the back bone of radio communications.

What's the big deal with these fields? Don't they pass directly through our bodies?

Well, no! Depending on the frequency, they may pass directly through your body or may be blocked completely. Each of these fields is a wave of electromagnetic radiation, which is a core building block of the universe. The lower the frequency, the longer the wave is, and the easier it passes through objects. The higher the frequency, the shorter the wave is, and the tougher it is to pass through objects. Radio waves may pass through the body with ease, but Wi-Fi signals may be blocked by the human body. 

What's important to understand is the concept of induced current. Simply put, a changing magnetic field creates current inside whatever it encounters. This is how devices receive signals. The wave hits the metal antenna, and easily creates a current because the metal is highly conductive and is shaped to efficiently capture/grab the wave. However, even insulators still experience the same induced currents, just at a much lower magnitude. 

As a result, the human body becomes exposed to multiple unnatural currents which causes charge accumulation in the body. The body is very complex and operates at low voltages, which could be impacted by these unnatural currents.

Without being grounded, these currents have no where to go. Think of one form, static electricity - rubbing your feet on carpet and then touching a grounding metal object will produce a shock from the accumulated charges. Grounding allows all of these charges to flow into the earth, letting the body regulate in its natural flow.

However, grounding without any form of protection or filtering poses a huge problem.

Your body acts like an antenna for even more unnatural currents to flow directly through you! With the body connected to ground, every wave now has a easy path to ground. Think of yourself as a giant water slide - all of the signals or noise which once hit a wall on your body now use it as a path to ground.

The answer to good grounding is obvious - we must block all unnatural currents while allowing natural currents to flow through.

But what is a natural current? How could we even tell the difference?

The key lies back in the concept of frequency. Direct current (DC) is current which is steady and always flowing in the same direction and pace. DC has a frequency of 0, since it is unchanging. Alternating current (AC) is current which changes direction and flows back and forth, just like a wave. AC can have any frequency, measured in Hertz. 1 Hertz (Hz) means the wave repeats 1 time every second (1 wave/1 second). 

Let's look at a range of frequencies. What is considered unnatural?

1-20 Hz is found in the body and other aspects of nature. The Schuman resonance lies within this range. These are almost never used in any devices, so we want these frequencies to pass through to ground!

20-50 Hz does not have many common sources, but starts to approach power delivery frequencies.

50-60 Hz is our first big spike, covering all common AC power delivery. The outlets and wires in your walls are surrounded by this. You may have even heard it before! It's common for some audio equipment to have a hum from these frequencies, particularly if cheap and not well designed. It may also be heard when close to a circuit breaker. This mains hum has even been used in criminal investigation to locate the source of video clips.

60 Hz - 1kHz is another dip with not many common sources, but may still have a source of noise.

1kHz+ and beyond is our next big spike, which comes from many electronic devices. Specifically, a big source comes from switching power supplies. These convert the AC from the wall into DC to be used in devices, which is great for the device, but any excess noise created gets dumped into the ground wire. As a result, the ground line in the wall could have many sources of this polluted "dirty electricity"!

Okay, how do we filter this?

Through the use of a specific resistance and optionally inductance, we are able to block the AC frequencies we do not want, and allow the DC and the frequencies we do want to flow. Each of our PEAK Grounding filters are specifically optimized for these ranges. 

These filters go between the grounding endpoint and the earth connection. Let's take a look at what the solution looks like.

With a direct grounding rod:

With a standard outlet connection:

To re-cap:

• Grounding is the practice of electrically connecting yourself to the earth.
• Human bodies operate on electricity.
• The earth conducts and holds electricity.
  • In the last ~100 years, plastics, rubber, wood, and other materials in almost every environment broke the natural connection to the earth. 
• Humans today accumulate excess electrical charge through 2 primary sources:
  
  • Internal - natural bodily operations 
  • External - unnatural conducted and induced current from noisy devices (power delivery, radio, Wi-Fi, etc.)
• Without a connection to the earth, the body is unbalanced.
• Grounding restores that connection!

BUT WAIT

• Grounding indoors via power outlets or a dedicated rod, allows ALL sources of electrical current to flow through you to the ground.
  • You are unintentionally exposing yourself to unwanted frequencies, polluting your ground connection.
  • The human body behaves like an antenna.   
• Solution: Filter the Ground! 
  
  • Block unnatural current (power delivery, radio, Wi-Fi, etc.)
  • Allow natural current (DC + Natural low frequency signals)
• Result:
  • Body allowed to connect and regulate with the earth.
  • Unnatural effects neutralized!

If you'd like to learn more about how specifically our PEAK Extreme maximizes the quality of your grounding, read our in-depth Peak Science deep dive!